We have to find a solution to gridlock somehow

Is charging people to park their cars at work really the best way to combat
congestion, asks David Millward.

Let's be blunt about this: climate change campaigners have seriously damaged the attempt to tackle the problem of urban congestion, making many motorists hostile towards any attempt to cut down traffic. As they struggle to work, I would venture to suggest that the amount of carbon they are emitting is not the first thing on motorists' minds. They are probably rather more annoyed by the amount of traffic and the inordinate length of time it takes to travel only a few miles.

When he was Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling hit the nail on the head when he warned of urban gridlock and our cities grinding to a halt. Rashly, his successors threw climate change into the mix and muddied the waters.

Road pricing was a hard enough thing to sell when it was hailed as a congestion busting tool: as soon as it became a way of saving the planet, it was dead in the water. The same can be said of the workplace parking levy. In some ways it is even nastier, because it makes no allowance for shift workers who do not have the option of public transport in the wee hours.

But that doesn't mean the problem of gridlock will go away. So we have a choice. Either we put up with crawling to work, or we find a solution which, even if painful, could make the process of commuting a bit less of an endurance test.

There has to be a way of either ensuring that fewer people get behind the wheel of their cars at the same time. Perhaps we could introduce a carrot, in the form of companies being offered tax breaks for allowing their staff to work from home more. Then there might also be the big stick approach, such as pushing up the cost of fuel - while scrapping Vehicle Excise Duty. Paying £2 a litre for petrol would be pretty ghastly. But it would be simple and it might even work.